


this one or none at all

by sunsmasher



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M, Marriage Proposal, Nikandros POV, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 04:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11501871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsmasher/pseuds/sunsmasher
Summary: Damen steals Nikandros' thunder."I’m going to ride home tomorrow and begin preparations to ask for her hand,” Nikandros says, and Laurent smiles wider and says, “Oh, wonderful,” as Damen leaps to his feet with a thundering crash of chair against flagstone.“Nikandros!” he shouts, papers flying, arms wide, “This— amazing! She sounds amazing! Congratulations!”





	this one or none at all

Nikandros storms down the hallway, ignores the guard’s nod, and slams the door to the King of Vere’s study shut behind him. It hits the frame with a satisfying thud.

The Kings of Vere and Akielos look up. They look back down.

“Good afternoon, Nikandros,” Laurent says, scanning a sheaf of papers in his lap, peeling off the top one and handing it to Damen. “Don’t put it in your mouth,” he says to Damen.

“Th’n don’t give m’ so many,” Damen replies, around the papers in his mouth. His feet are propped on the arm of Laurent’s chair, his lap covered with an even greater array of ink and figures than Laurent’s.

Nikandros’ fists are tight at his side. “You set me up,” he says to Laurent.

“If you’ve gotten another donkey stuck in a bedchamber I get to annex Varenne,” Damen says, taking the papers from his mouth and holding them out to Laurent.

“I'm not touching those,” Laurent says, and then, “I have no idea what either of you are talking about.”

Damen snorts and Nikandros says, _“The lady Nathalie.”_

“Oh, your lunch with her was today, wasn't it,” Damen says, still giving the majority of his attention to his scattered paperwork. “How did it go?”

“Yes, Nikandros,” Laurent says. “How did it go?”

“You know how it went,” Nikandros snaps.

“Alright,” Damen sighs, finally fixing Laurent with a look. “What did you do.”

 _“She was perfect,”_ Nikandros says, in agony, and Laurent smiles.

The match would be politically prudent, of course. Her the eldest granddaughter of the last Veretian lord of Delpha, him the Kyros of Ios and his King’s right hand. It would be a week of feasting if they married, celebrating not only their actual union but the symbolic strengthening of the alliance. Nikandros might have considered it on that basis alone. But there’d been more.

She had understood him, was the thing. As they’d wandered hour after hour through what would someday be the gardens of Marlas and was now mostly herbs and chicken coops and the vast golden fields of Delpha, he had told her about what it meant to be Kyros of Ios, to not only serve his King and his country, but to serve his people, to wake up with that obligation upon him every day, and she had said yes.

 _It’s challenging, isn’t it,_ she’d said, her accent making music of the Akielon. _In the good way. Becoming everything you must be. You have to, and then you do, and then you’ve done it, and then you do it again._

Her family had been out of favor in Arles since Delpha was lost, a length of time not unlike centuries in the life of the court. Nathalie had taken the tatters of their reputation, their fortune, a generation of slander heaped upon them, and made them once more into lords of the South. Nikandros had realized after their second turn around the donkey pen that he was staring at her in a wholly unfamiliar wonder.

When she’d noticed she’d laughed at him, and knocked her shoe into his heel.

“I’m going to ride home tomorrow and begin preparations to ask for her hand,” Nikandros says, and Laurent smiles wider and says, “Oh, wonderful,” as Damen leaps to his feet with a thundering crash of chair against flagstone.

“Nikandros!” he shouts, papers flying, arms wide, “This— amazing! She sounds amazing! Congratulations!”

Damen has neither met Nathalie nor ever heard her described. Unconcerned by this, he pulls Nikandros into a hug that could take down a bull and bellows further congratulations in his ear.

“I thought you two might get along,” Laurent is saying, barely audible under Damen’s sincere and unstoppable joy, and Nikandros snaps back, “Yes, because you _set me up with her,_ you told her to come to Marlas and had a conversation with her about reducing inefficiencies in siege warfare right in _front of me.”_

“Yes, and I told her to keep quiet about that, too, but ultimately she is her own person and made her own decision,” Laurent says, radiating satisfaction in this warm and sunny room as Damen finally releases Nikandros, one arm left slung around his shoulders as if it would be unbearable to let Nikandros stand completely alone in his triumph. “I suspect she chose well. You’ll have the wedding here, of course, where everyone can get a good look at you. Winter will be best. Around the solstice, perhaps.”

“Laurent, you’re not—” Nikandros starts, in vain.

“The steward was a smidge unhappy at the idea of another grand event before we’ve finished expanding the hall,” Laurent continues as if Nikandros had never spoken, “but she agrees that speed is of the essence for a match like this.”

“Laurent, will you for one moment stop planning my wedding,” Nikandros says, with a certain shortness, and Damen freezes.

“I’m only making suggestions,” Laurent replies. “Strongly.”

“Wait, you were—” Damen says, “you were planning _Nikandros'_ wedding?”

“And my betrothal and my engagement, I’m sure,” Nikandros replies. “Is there a way to make him stop?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t know the first thing about Veretian weddings,” Laurent says, “and Nathalie, for all her many features, hasn’t had to marry anyone off in years. I sent for the Lord and Lady de Bonpre last week— you know them, they assisted us with the Ascension, they’ll be excellent help in figuring out the least intolerable way to put on a joint Akielon-Veretian wedding.”

“I can hardly contain my excitement,” Nikandros replies, ruthlessly quashing the small part of him that is unutterably excited at the thought of Nathalie in silks and winter blossoms, holding her hands between his, but then Damen makes another choking noise.

“Nikandros’ wedding,” Damen says again, looking suddenly hunted, “that’s why you were— why you sent for the de Bonpres, you were planning Nikandros'—”

 _“Yes,_ Damen,” Laurent says, a bit of exasperation in his small smile, finally giving up his enjoyment of Nikandros’ impotent frustration to meet his lover’s strange gaze. “Of course I was. Whose else are we talking about?”

With a sudden enlightened dread, Nikandros sees it coming. Damen’s arm is still around his neck. There’s no escape.

“I thought,” Damen says, and pauses, and swallows, “...I thought you were planning ours?”

Laurent stops breathing.

“Our wedding,” he says, carefully, as if he suddenly doesn’t understand the Akielon. His eyes are like saucers.

“Are you not already married,” Nikandros says, unable to work up the sincerity of tone to make it a question. Of course they're doing this in front of him. He should, somehow, have expected it.

“I was a little surprised,” Damen says, with that laugh that indicates bone-quaking nervousness poorly smothered, “because you’d always objected when I brought it up—”

“We can’t get married,” Laurent says, staring fixedly at Damen's wide-open face.

“Right, exactly,” Damen says, “just like that, but then when I overheard you talking with the steward I thought, well, maybe you’d changed your mind and wanted to surprise me with it—”

“You co-rule two kingdoms in a pair of slave cuffs, is that not marriage?” Nikandros asks, without an answer, because no one is paying attention to him, because he does not need to be here. He attempts to inch Damen’s arm off his shoulder.

“There’s no precedent,” Laurent says, in that tone again like he’s reading from rote. “The alliance is precedented. There’s no precedent for marriage. Not without heirs. The Council will never legitimize it.”

“Yes, I agree,” Damen says and then catches himself, “—I _agreed._ But I thought you were going to propose, you see, and I thought about all the consequences we’ve always talked about, and all the people we thought we’d have to fight to make this real.”

Nikandros ducks away quickly when Damen’s arm comes free of his shoulder, edging towards the door. Neither of them notice even a little. Damen is taking Laurent’s pale hands in his, drawing him up from the chair. Papers cascade to the floor.

“And I realized I don’t _care,"_ Damen says, to Laurent, with Laurent’s eyes on him, with their hands joined. Nikandros’ shoulder hits the wall. “I don’t care how many people we have to fight, the Council, my kyroi, I don’t care. We fight them all everyday about the most pointless things in the world, who pays for what battalion, who grazes which flocks. Laurent, I’d _love_ to fight them about something that matters.”

“You sent that summons to the Master of Histories in Ios,” Laurent says, in that tone that is no longer quite so toneless. “I thought you were, I didn’t think about why you—”

“The least intolerable way to put on a joint Akielon-Veretian wedding,” Damen smiles, shaky and genuine. “I thought I might need some advice.”

Nikandros thinks, as his hand finds the door handle and he begins to pull, that this may be the first time he’s ever seen Laurent of Vere entirely speechless.

Shit. The door’s stuck. _Shit._

“And I wish I could have done this as it should be done,” Damen says, his flustered look subsumed now by something clear-eyed, the nerves in his voice suddenly unimportant, “I wish I could have gone to your father and mother and pled my case. I wish I could have— I wish I could have gone to your brother,” he says, and Laurent inhales in some great shuddering breath that stops neither of them, “—But I can’t. I can’t go to your family or mine. It’s just us. It’s only us. Laurent—”

Nikandros makes one last, futile attempt to jiggle the handle and then stops, resigned. It would now be rude to interrupt.

“I want the historians to know it,” Damen says. “I want us to be carved together on the walls of the Kingsmeet. I want no one to ever mistake what you mean to me.”

He moves Laurent’s hands until they face each other, palm to palm, and Damen can close his own around them. It’s traditional in Akielos, an echo of the wedding ceremony. Nikandros wonders if Laurent knows.

“Will you—” and finally Damen’s nerve seems to run dry, leaving him flushed again, a little breathless, smiling with one corner of his mouth,”—would you marry me?”

And then he waits.

Nikandros has never seen Laurent look like this.

He isn't sure how to put the sight into words, how to frame it in terms he can himself understand. Laurent is flushed, yes, his mouth half-open, his eyes wide. But the _manner_ in which he looks at Damen, the shape of that light in his eyes, is beyond Nikandros somehow, and Nikandros’ knowledge of him.

Damen is staring right back. His hands are very faintly shaking.

Nikandros is trapped in this whether he likes it or not.

He remembers when they got drunk.

Well over a year ago, maybe a month after Laurent’s Ascension. Damen had spent all day arguing issues of sovereignty with the kyroi. Nikandros had rewarded him with several cups of strong wine and a willingness to wave off anyone who’d tried to disturb them as they sat on Damen’s balcony and laughed louder and louder at their own jokes. And some time before midnight Damen had mentioned, offhand, like it was obvious, that it was Laurent who proposed the alliance and Damen who had said yes.

 _You did what?_  Nikandros had shouted, voice perhaps a bit high, as Damen had slapped his thigh and laughed and spilled his wine. Somehow the thought that the whole cursed thing was born of Damen’s mind had been easier to stomach. Of course Damen would unite two warring nations so he could fuck a blond. It had seemed simple.

 _But all this,_  Nikandros had said, _I know you care for him, but all of this— the kyroi, the unrest, the threats of secession— you must have known it would come. It wasn’t even your idea. How could you say yes?_

It was a question Nikandros had asked before, in tones both joking and serious. Damen may even, in the past, have answered him. But still Damen had grinned, flushed with wine and love, and said, _Oh, but you should have seen him._

The night had been clear, the stars shining. Damen’s half-full cup had held the image of the moon.

 _And he’s the smartest person I know, Nikandros,_ Damen had said, as if he had not said it before, _the absolute smartest, he runs circles around me every day, but when I said yes,_ and now his eyes were sparkling, like the wine, like the night, _it was such a simple question, and when I said yes— you should have seen him. It was like he’d never known the sky before, or the ocean, or the trees, or, or the rocks, and I held all the world in my hands. And I was giving it to him._

The light in the study is warm as honey.

Damen and Laurent gaze at each other. They hold the world between them.

Laurent says, “Yes.”

And Damen takes Laurent’s face between his hands and kisses him and kisses him until Laurent breaks from that same stiff pose he has held since Damen first pulled him to his feet and throws his arms around Damen’s neck and kisses him back, kisses him mightily, with his eyes screwed shut and on the tips of his toes. Damen makes a noise deep in his throat.

The door behind Nikandros begins, finally, to move.

“Sires,” says the guard, “We saw the door shaking and thought it might have gotten stuck again, are you—”

“Shut up,” hisses Nikandros, as the kissing collapses into an embrace so tight he thinks Laurent’s grip might tear holes in Damen’s chiton, “Shut up and let’s go immediately, right now.”

The guard, baffled, suffers to be pushed back into the hall. Nikandros follows at his heels and closes the door as quickly and quietly as he physically can.

He catches one last glimpse of their tangled figures. Damen’s face buried in Laurent’s neck, Laurent’s hand in his hair. And then the door shuts.

There are at least five guards in the hallway, a mix of Veretian and Akielon.

“Milord,” says one of the Veretians, even as one of the Akielons makes a frantic shushing motion from what he thinks is Nikandros’ blindspot, “Should we, uh, give their Majesties a few minutes?”

“Several,” Nikandros says, and waves all but the first to follow him down the hall. They clatter after him like armored ducklings.

He is… happy for them. There’s no hardship in admitting that. They make each other deeply, visibly happy. Someday perhaps he and Nathalie might—

Nikandros stops, dumbstruck, and then swears loud enough to make the clustered guards jump.

“My lord?” says one of them.

“The fort will know of their engagement within the hour,” Nikandros says, to a chorus of shocked noises. "Planning has— ha, planning has already started."

The guards exchange nervy looks. They are a little out of their depth.

"Somehow the silly fool has both orchestrated my wedding and usurped it entirely," Nikandros says, and, despite his best intentions, smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you just have to spray whipped cream directly into your own mouth. this is entirely born out of a conversation with the famed emma cosmogyral/catchaspark. i'm on tumblr [@lambergeier](http://lambergeier.tumblr.com) and twitter also [@lambergeier](http://twitter.com/lambergeier).


End file.
